Category Archives: Crime Fiction

Contents Vol. 3 No. 4

Crime Fiction, Pulp Fiction, Steampunk Fiction, Western Fiction, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Welcome to Volume Three, Number Four of Dime Pulp,
A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine. 

In this issue of  Dime Pulp, A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine,  Colin Deerwood’s long running 40’s pulp detective serial, Better Than Dead,  Phyllis Huldarsdottir’s steampunk Cheése Stands Alone, and Pierre Anton Taylor’s crime fighting Just Coincidence, combine to give the reader their dime’s worth of Serial Pulp Fiction!

FYI: Available for readers of Dime Pulp who may have missed a few issues or lost the thread of a serial,  Dime Pulp Yearbook 21, featuring the novels (The Last Resort and Better Than Dead) and the short fiction (Hard Boiled Myth and Gone Missing) of Volume One’s 12 issues,  is joined by Dime Pulp Yearbook 22, featuring the complete pulp Western, On The Road To Las Cruces, continuing episodes of  a detective story, Better Than Dead, the opening chapters of new serial novels, Just Coincidence and Cheése Stands Alone, the short fiction of Hard Boiled Myth and Polka Dot Dress, as well as Dropping A Dime’s pithy pulp observations.  Volume Two’s 10 issues are available for perusal in their entirety by simply clicking on the links in this paragraph or on the menu bar above.

If you’ve made it this far, go ahead and follow the links below to reading entertainment with the serial contents of Volume Three, Number 4

Special Note: Dime Pulp, A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine has changed its posting schedule from  monthly issues to once every forty-five days. Thus Volume Three will consist of eight issues (much to the relief of the overworked writers and production staff). Thank you for your understanding.

 —Perry O’Dickle, chief scribe
and word accountant

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“Lackland Ask is the name. ‘Lack’ to my friends, ‘Don’t’ to those who think they’re funny. You might have seen my portrait on the cover of Black Mask, the crime fiction magazine. This is my story. It starts with a blonde. This kind of story always starts with a blonde.” Thus begins the seemingly non-stop, endless narrative of Better Than Dead in which women are not the only trouble although most of it, told with the wit and street savvy of Runyon and Parker.

Better Than Dead—26

LCinset21In March of 1892, a Scotsman by the name of Arthur C. “Artie” Doyle was hanged by the neck until dead after being found guilty of a string of grisly murders of prostitutes in Whitechapel. At that moment, history veered off its presumed course and headed in a direction all its own in which the Great War never happened because the Kaiser was afraid of offending his grandmother, Queen Victoria, whose life has been prolonged by the wonders of biology. Her reign, known as the Pax Victoriana has lasted 180  years maintaining as many Victorian airs as possible while making accommodations to rapid advances in bio technology. Cheése Stands Alone poses a steampunk question, can Captain Lydia Cheése  (pronounced “Chase”) find her father, the antigovernment turncoat and radical, Commodore Jack “Wild Goose” Cheése. And furthermore, will her quest take her around the globe and through alternate world histories in the requisite 80 days or is it the beginning of a lifelong journey?

Cheése Stands Alone IX

JCA1S3In Just Coincidence, a privileged young man with the unremarkable name of Wayne Bruce returns to the site where his father once had his business, a battery manufacturing plant, and where he often spent his childhood days hanging around the factory and the neighborhood. His return is haunted by the mysterious circumstances surrounding his father’s death and the vague feeling that his uncle is somehow involved.  Appalled by the poverty and crime of the place he remembers fondly, he is moved to resolve the injustice of the socially marginalized and to wreak vengeance on those he believes are responsible for the death of his father. A personal coincidence brings together dark prince and dark knight joined in a fateful and tragic quest for justice.

Act Two, Scene 2, Part 1

Better Than Dead—26

Crime Fiction, Pulp Fiction, Steampunk Fiction, , , , ,

by Colin Deerwood

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The phone was ringing in the hall. Ringing. I could hear it. Ringing. I could see it. Ringing. In my mind’s eye. Ringing. In a smokey pool hall. Ringing. Why wasn’t anyone answering the ringing? I would have answered but the room I was in had no doors, just four walls of cheap wallpaper and scratched up wainscotting. The ringing wouldn’t let up. The smoke was making my eyes weep blood. I had to force them open to the faintest slits. That’s when it hit me like a bucket of cold water. The bucket of cold water.

Standing over me with an empty bucket and an impish grin was the moonshiner’s daughter. “You set yourself on fire!” She said it like it was a joke.

I felt like a joke. The slant rays of light through the window of the cabin sparked the dust motes and the smoke and filled the empty jar on the table like the ghost of what it once contained. I looked down at myself covered in wet, the blanket as well, and the ragged smoking black hole the now soggy cigarette had burned through it.

The light was hurting my eyes worse than before and now I had a brutal headache to go along with it. I glanced up at Marie out of the side of my eye. She seemed to be gloating.

“Where were you yesterday when I needed you?”

She desperately wanted to be needed. “No! What are you talking about?”

“You were supposed to keep a lookout so nobody’d sneak up on me.”

“What?”

“Yesterday I got a visit from Constable Thorndyke. You coulda warned me.”

She shook her shoulders with a shiver. “Oh, Thorny. He’s a snake.” And she made a face like she’d tasted something unpleasant. “”He likes to make like he’s your uncle or some other relative and tell you what to do, especially with girls. The boys he just puts them in jail if he catches them, but the girls, he takes out for long drives on deserted back roads in his jalopy and talks about the Lord and how we’re supposed to all act like young ladies.”

I pulled myself upright and wiped some water off my scraggly beard. “You’ve gone on a ride with Thorny?” I didn’t want to sound too paternal.

She shook her head. “No, Thorny wouldn’t dare cause he knows what pa would do to him. But some girls I know, older girls, they told me. Said they’d rather go to jail than go on ‘the ride’ with Thorny. He made their skin crawl.”

I grunted in acknowledgement that I understood. “Where were you, anyway?”

“I was at the Odeon in Grover City with my friend, Irma. We spent the day there. First for lunch at the Downtown Diner, and then a double feature. Two Clark Gable movies. I’d seen one of them before, but that Gable, he’s so dashing, Though I don’t think he’s that good of a singer. And Claudette Colbert is just too brassy. I don’t know what he sees in her,” she said wistfully. “There’s a change of feature tomorrow with a new William Powell movie. I like him too, especially when he’s acting with Myrna Loy. He seems very charming. Even as a private eye.”

I nodded and groaned as any movement of my head made it throb. I could have said that’s what I am, a private eye, but then she might have got the wrong idea from the movies. Hollywood never gets it right. They always give the shamus a conscience, noble principle. You can’t have any of that if you’re going to be a private investigator and expect to survive. When you’re a bottom feeder, high falutin ideals just get in the way of doing the job. I knew that. I had gone soft on Rebecca and that got me nothing but grief.

I staggered to my feet and she reached out to help me. I pushed her away. I was a little unsteady but I managed. I knew what I had to do and soon. I lurched for the door and mumbled “gotta see a troll about a hole” and stumbled off the porch and in the direction of the lopsided closet off to the side of the cabin.

“”Don’t fall in!” she called after me brightly.

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I hadn’t really wanted to think about it. What Thorny had said on the way back from the graveyard. We’d been stopped by the roadblock. Thorny knew the deputy, a young lug with a square head and eyes that wouldn’t stay still. A girl had gone missing, the daughter of Judge Chandler. She didn’t return home after a shopping trip to Grover City. It had been two days now. They had the dogs out searching the lower shore of Middle Lake near the dump.

The deputy had eyed me suspiciously. Maybe it was the dark glasses, or the beard that was growing unevenly along the ridge of my jaw. Thorny had laughed when he caught the drift of the deputy’s gaze. “This here’s one of the Ask cousins from out in the Midwest. If you know the Asks you’d say they all had that same family resemblance. This one here is the near spitting image of old Ned Ask who didn’t look like any of them either. You might remember him from when you was a young hellion.”

The young deputy had nodded his head, grinning. “The fisherman! With the old Indian motor bike!”

Right about then a rickety Model T sputtered up behind Thorny’s Ford and the deputy waved us through after saying he was pleased to meet me.

I didn’t think too much about being mistaken for old Ned but Thorny’s remark struck a nerve. And it bothered me all the way back to Little Lake.

The grease monkey who pumped my gas at the livery in Ridley had thought I looked like my old man’s younger brother. Marie and her father had remarked on the closeness. And now Thorny. Only Ruthie hadn’t said anything, maybe because she’d known all along and wasn’t surprised that I looked like Ned.

It got me to thinking and when I’m thinking I like to do it with a drink for company as it helps provide a different point of view on what I might be thinking about. I dipped into old Ned’s cache of everclear and settled in to a bit of hard thinking and hard drinking which maybe I shouldn’t have been doing especially when I was thinking about things that maybe I shouldn’t have been thinking about. But those thoughts just kept crawling back into my head and I had to drink more to blot them out. The more I drank, the tighter the circles my thinking made until I got so dizzy I passed out.

All of that thinking drink gushed out of me like a fire hydrant into the hole at my feet.

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If I was any good at math I might have put two and two together. I’d soaked my head in the lake trying to wash out the ache. I’d changed into an old pair of trousers I’d cut off at the knees as a swimsuit from the pile of musty old clothes in Granny’s bedroom. I ran my shirt under the pump and wrung it out. I spot cleaned my jacket and trousers and set them and the shirt out to dry on a big boulder by the lake.

Then I crept over to the chicken coop on Crazy Wilson’s property and swiped a couple of fresh eggs Marie had left out with the idea that I could collect them. She’d offered them when she heard me complain about how I was getting tired of canned beans, burnt rice, and lake trout. She also showed me how to avoid the booby traps her pa had set up around the property. If any one of them were triggered, he was sure to shoot, she’d warned.

I lit a fire in the outdoor stone fireplace and greased up a flat skillet and fried up the eggs. They hit the spot and satisfied my empty belly but my throbbing head was making me wobbly and I knew that there was but one solution. Hair of the dog. Unfortunately, using hair of the dog to cure the hangover has a lot in common with being in debt to a loan shark: you’ll never pay it off.

The first sip went down hard and I felt my gut riding the elevator up to the top floor. The second taste wet my whistle with only a slight shudder. By the third lip smacking swallow, my headache and I were on more friendly terms.

My eyes still burned but I could see clearly what my next step was going to be. I had to get over to the courthouse in Grover City where the birth records were kept at the County Recorder’s Office. Once I got the certificate I was going to use it to apply for a passport under the name of Jerome Paulsen and take myself  some place south of the border where Kovic, the cops, the feds, the diamond dealers, the draft board, or the Thieves Of Bombay would never find me. I figured that if I went in asking for the document looking like a mug, the clerk might be a little suspicious. I had to look legit, like that was my job, that I did it all the time. I worked for a law firm in the city if they thought to ask. But if they’re like most government clerks, they almost never do. Unless they stepped on the cat’s tail that morning and spilled their entire cup of hot coffee over themselves.

I had just stretched out in the shade of the porch, counting my chickens before they hatched, mainly about how much money I could get for Ted’s art piece if Alice found a buyer, when I heard a high whistle pretending to be a bird. That was Marie’s warning signal. I looked up to see her at the edge of the thicket between the properties pointing to the path leading up to Little Road. And then I heard the voices. I spun around just in time to see a slim young boy in a pair of swimming trunks, towel draped around his neck, and lugging a large wicker picnic basket. Right behind, a little girl in a summer dress and bare feet came running after him. And behind her, the other twin with their mother, Ruthie. I should have known. She’d probably sent Thorny out to reconnoiter the lay of the land as it were. Bringing up the rear, a large gunny sack over one shoulder and murder in her eyes, was the cook.

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Ruthie was wearing a long sleeved robe, a large woven purse slung over one arm, open toe sandals, a floppy straw hat, and white frame sunglasses. She stopped in her tracks and placed a hand on her hip when she saw me. I felt like a bug under a magnifying glass or maybe a mouse who had just wandered into the cat’s path. Either way, the only word I could think of was “uh-oh.”

She smiled to show me she was pleased with what she saw or was it just to show me her teeth, a row of tiny uniform bone grinders.

“Surprise! We thought we’d come and use the lake. Hope you don’t mind.”

They’d all gathered around the front porch looking at me expectantly. Ruthie cocked an appraising eyebrow. “Who do you think you are, Tarzan?”

“Yeah, that’s me, Tarzan. I got tired of the jungle and thought I’d try out the pines and the lake.”

“Tarzan doesn’t have a beard,” Ruthie’s boy chimed in.

“Have you ever seen Tarzan shave? Maybe he has a barber. Runs down to the local village and has the witch doctor scrape a machete across his chin.”

“I don’t think he wears dark glasses.” This was the older girl, well on her way to being just like her mother.”

I had to shrug. “I don’t understand why. As lord of the jungle he’s certainly entitled to.”

“That’s quite a swim suit. Make it yourself?” Ruthie said with a mocking grin.

I laughed because I probably did look a sight, a ragged fringe of threads dangling around my knees. “I found an old pair of trousers in Granny’s room. I had to use the axe to chop them off at the knees.”

“Granny’s room,” Ruthie looked past me at the doorway. “That was the forbidden inner sanctum. If you got caught in there you’d get the switch.”

“Telling us we weren’t allowed to go in there was like telling us we had no choice but to try.”

“I snuck in there one time with Cole Turner, my older cousin. He said he wanted to show me something. Everybody talked on how Granny must have had jewels or gold hidden in there that she kept so secret.”

I’d heard that rumor and once asked my mother about it. She assured me that there was no truth to it. Granny was just guarding her privacy. “Are you sure it was him going to show you something?”

Ruthie caught what I was hinting and narrowed her eyes at me, and then glanced over at her kids. “What are you standing around for? Go jump in the lake!” And as an afterthought, asked me, “How’s the water?”

“Wet.” The kids hadn’t waited for my answer and were already running down to the boat dock.

“Very funny. You should be on the radio. Like Jack Benny.”

“Maybe I should have my own show. A quiz show. I’d call it Ask Me Anything. With your host, Lackland ‘Lucky’ Ask!” I gave a dim smile.

“People still call you Lucky? That was Granny’s nickname for you.”

“No one in recent memory. And for obvious reasons. Granny hated the name Lackland which is a family name on my mother’s side. She couldn’t understand why anyone would be named ‘no land.’”

“Well, she was right, it is an odd name.” And peering into the dimness beyond the door. “You sleeping in her room?” she asked with a wicked smile.

I don’t know why I blushed but I did. And I almost never stutter. “No, no. I sleep on the, the cot by the door.”

“Why, Lack, are you still afraid to get caught in Granny’s room? By her ghost?”

Of course I wasn’t, but that was Ruthie, always looking for a way to make fun of someone. “I go in there all the time!” I insisted a little too vehemently. “That’s where I got these trousers. Not much in there but an old musty rat eaten mattress and boxes and drawers full of old clothes.”

Ruthie brushed past me and stepped into the cabin. “You know, Tarzan doesn’t wear pants, just some little old leather mud flap.”

The cooked dropped one of the pans she had hauled in the gunny sack and the clatter distracted me. Much about Ruthie the few summers I’d spent at Little Lake was coming back to me. Besides being a bully to the younger kids, she liked to dare you to do something stupid and then fink on you when you did. “Ruthie made me do it” was the common excuse although it didn’t save you from getting the switch or the belt.

“Well, if you don’t mind I’ll just go into Granny’s room and change into my bathing suit.” And she stalked to the back of the cabin.

The cook was struggling with the pump handle and I walked over to help her. “The handle’s stiff at first. It just needs a few good pumps.”

“I’ve heard that said.” She gave me a leery side glance.

“Let me help you with that.”

She shook her head. “I don’t need you interfering with my business.” And with the tilt of her round chin. “You gonna be busy yourself here before too long.”

I was wondering what she meant by that when I heard my name called.

“Like I said, I can do that myself. You got other things to tend to.”

Ruthie called out my name again, this time adding, “I want to show you something!”

I glanced at the jar of clear liquid sitting on the edge of the porch and decided that if I was going to responded to Ruthie’s summons, I was going to need another pull.

“I found something you might want to see!” was the siren’s call beckoning me to my doom.

Next Time: Lady In The Lake

Act Two, Scene 2, pt.1

Crime Fiction, Pulp Fiction, Steampunk Fiction, , , , , ,

by Pierre Anton Taylor

Harold had called an emergency board meeting, It almost turned into an intervention with Wayne as the focus. Present were his mother, Trish, and Dr. Linus Pall. Two other members of the board were out of reach and two others were connected via conference call. Harold had returned from DC and the news was not positive. The contract was officially under review. He assured them that it was just a technicality but Wallace Bruce’s sudden death had sent up flags and because the agency was itself under congressional review, they were going to proceed according to the letter of the law and order a full audit of Bruce Enterprise. An outside accounting firm would have to be engaged and it would be costly. “The PR office will be on the alert for any adverse publicity that could affect the company’s place in the standings and putting a positive spin on anything that might reflect badly on the brand.

“Wall had been pushing hard on expansion and acquisitions and took some risks. But he fought hard to be in the running with fierce competition from companies with offshore manufacturing in Indonesia. He was very proud that he could stamp American Made on our products.”

Harold went on to explain that negotiations were ongoing so no need to panic although Wallace’s death could not have come at a more critical time. And that, more than ever, the company’s future depended on research and development represented by the work being done at Bruce Advanced Technical Solutions.

Eyes rested briefly on Wayne. He set his jaw and met their gazes. He had been briefed on most of what Harold was saying when his uncle had returned from DC. The mention of BATS replayed a conversation he’d had with the lab supervisor regarding the sample taken from the carpeting in the penthouse where old dad had died. The high concentration of acetate was still unexplainable and inconclusive.

It had occurred to Wayne during the repeated viewings of the footage of the elevator to the penthouse and his father entering it alone the night of his death, that if there was any foul play it would have occurred in that box. But how? Unless the elevator was the killer.

He steeled a glare at Dr. Pall. He may have been the last one to see his father alive if what Charlotte had said was true. His attempts to meet with the good doctor face to face had been canceled or rescheduled as if he were being avoided. He was sure it had to do with his breaking off the engagement with Charlotte. Pall had been outraged by it.

“I’ve put on retainer a security consultant, Smith Brothers Security, to investigate the circumstances surrounding the designation of the old battery works as a toxic site and look for signs of impropriety. Any hint of culpability must be minimized to zero. If you understand what I mean. That we are taking the initiative on this matter will be further evidence that there was no attempt or intent to defraud the Toxic Cleanup Fund.” Harold paused to look at the notes in front of him.

“They were represented to me as an entirely reputable and reliable investment in the specialty toxic cleanup business.” Linus Pall adjusted the water glass in front of him to line up with the top right corner of the blank notepad in front of him at a forty-five degree angle. “I tendered my resignation as soon as I learned of the allegations. I’m on a number of boards, charitable organizations as well, and for the most part I’m just another hand at the table.” He smiled as if to himself secretly. “I’m in the business of business. That’s what I do. I’m a physician, and attorney, and I’m also the director of a world renowned rehabilitation clinic catering to an exclusive international clientele. Membership on various boards allows me access to potential clients that we can best serve.”

Pall lifted his gaze from his hands folded in front of him and addressed Wayne. “I was your father’s physician so you can imagine my shock at his heart attack. I knew him to be in good health for a man of his age although he did disregard my advice on his eating and drinking habits, not enough of the former and too much of the latter. And as his personal attorney I was his close confidant and advisor. I am positive that Wallace Bruce had no foreknowledge that there might be anything improper about the toxic site designation at the abandoned battery factory. He was in fact appalled by the report of toxic chemicals after all this time. He was diligent about ensuring a safe environment for his workers and abiding by the disposal regulations. He did admit that some contamination could have occurred and might have been missed when they closed the old plant down. ‘There’s no clean way to make a battery’ I’ve no doubt you’ve heard him say many times before. Yet he believed that the future was in portable energy, that it would power the technology of the future. He was nostalgic about the old battery factory even as it became a liability. Again, being an astute businessman, he resigned himself to having the cleanup done, razing the old brickworks, and selling the land to developers to recoup the cost.

“Walace is the reason Bruce Enterprise exists today. It is his legacy and that is what is at stake, as is the fate of the company. We must move on and not waste any more time or resources on the trivial matter of the Battery Works. It may have been his humble beginnings but it is dwarfed by the stellar accomplishments of his later years. He was a force of nature, but his wind has died down.” Pall wet his lips with the water in the glass and returned it to the exact same spot.

“Fortunately Harold is at the helm now. This has always been a family enterprise. Your mother understands the need for a united front if the BE brand is to have a future and continue as an innovator in portable energy devices. You have an opportunity to contribute by presenting yourself as a corporate leader, a responsible businessman following in your father’s footsteps, not a mountain climbing sky diving martial arts playboy with nothing better to do than dabble in philanthropy with a valuable piece of property in a misguided attempt to appease his guilt. Going through with the marriage to Charlotte Taste would have been more of a level headed decision for a captain of industry and an indication that you voted for the future of Bruce Enterprise. Yet you insist on wallowing in the past. Tell me what will this memorial do other than inflate your ego. What good will your defiance of common sense do? Forget this obsession and get your life back on track! Otherwise, it is madness!”

“And why does it have to be in the most crime infested part of the city?” Trish added. “Drive by shootings, muggings, drug dealing. I can’t imagine a more unsavory location. And the police still haven’t caught that vigilante terrorizing innocent people.”

Wayne had heard his mother’s complaint before. And his argument was that the kind of crime that was committed in East Central was due to poverty. And he’d wanted to add that it was the kind of crime that occurred in corporate boardrooms that was responsible for that poverty and was rarely if ever prosecuted.

Celia Grove, one of the longest serving board members and someone he had grown up knowing as Aunt Celia, chimed in. “You speak of legacy, Linus, and your focus is strictly business, but Wallace Bruce’s legacy also includes charitable work, philanthropy, the repaying the service and work of his employees. That legacy of giving back to the community makes him an honorable man. And what Wayne proposes honors his father and does it by bringing jobs back to the depressed area. And I might add that as his father’s heir he has the latitude to pursue that aspect of the corporation’s mission.”

Dr. Pall fidgeted, staring at the black box in the center of the table from which the voice emanated. “We already know that, Celia!” Linus and Celia were rivals, hardly friends, perhaps because it was believed that at one time Celia had been old dad’s paramour and that both she and Linus could claim exclusive rights to a certain intimacy with the deceased.

Trish spoke up. She disliked Celia for obvious reasons as well as what she deemed was the woman’s holier than thou attitude. “Celia has a point. Wallace particularly enjoyed that aspect of his wealth. He reveled in the ritual of giving his money away not so much for the good that it might do but because it made him feel god-like, that his generosity could affect so many people and that they would see him as a benefactor in their lives, name their children after him. It solidified his moral ground. He was on his way to being a bronze statue of himself, anyway. That said, I agree with Linus. The renovations at the old battery factory is a distraction. Wayne, dear, you must understand that our focus must be solely on weathering this awful audit.”

“That brings up another issue,” Celia interrupted from the box at the center of the conference table. “We just did a full audit not more than two years ago, I believe. Couldn’t we just amend that audit, bring it up to date?”

There was a pause as Harold took a deep breath and rolled his eyes.

“I mean, it would get it done quicker,” Celia added, “and it wouldn’t be as costly.”

Harold nodded his head impatiently as if she could see him. As he was about to answer, the low whistle of snoring was audible as the remaining board member indicated his presence.

“Celia, yes, we’ve already said that. I don’t know why you brought it up again when we had already discussed it earlier and I explained to you why what you suggested will not satisfy the review committee.” Harold signaled to his secretary who was hovering outside the glass door to the conference room. She opened the door partway to announce, “The Smith Brothers are here.”

Wayne had known the Smith Brothers, Trey and Mark, when they attended the same elite prep school. Back then they were known to everyone as “Rosy” and “Goldy.” Trey’s ruddy complexion resulted in that moniker. Mark’s almost platinum locks named him. Wayne had run into them socially a few times since their school days. Trey, William Smith III, was still ruddy complected but had lost the baby fat and had acquired the broad shoulders of an athlete. Mark sported a buzz cut, gone was the disco look of an earlier time. That they had matured might have been an overstatement. They had certainly settled into adulthood, hardened by a cynicism that comes from dealing with others they considered inferior to them. The schools they attended had made clear the dividing line between them and the others. And Smith Brothers had made it a business in keeping the others at a distance from those like them who could afford their security services.

Smith Brothers Security had been founded by their father, a former police detective with ambition, and his brother, a well-known defense attorney. In that way Wayne and the Smith Brothers were alike—they both toiled in their fathers’ figurative vineyard. Otherwise, he  had nothing in common with them.

After they had been introduced to the board and pleasantries exchanged, Harold had adjourned the meeting. He was confident that Wayne would brief the brothers on the details of the matter. Trish and Linus left deep in conversation, with Linus offering a parting shot, “Keep in mind what I said, Wayne.”

There was an espresso bar in the anteroom of the executive office which the executive secretary had served them in the inner sanctum. The brothers and Wayne sipped from their demitasses, Wayne seated in the large leather armchair usually occupied by his father and opposite the glass topped low table where Trey sat in the adequate leather couch. Mark leaned against the edge of the large desk commanding easily a quarter of the space.

Trey set his demitasse on the table and made a show of taking in the grandeur of the large windowed office. “Nice digs, Way. Is this where you hang out?” “Way” was a nickname he had acquired in prep school where it was usually paired with “out” or “no.” And as a privileged class no one used the word “work.” In their world one created a presence, like the gods of myth, by hanging out and making things happen.

“No, this is the old man’s. I have an office at the BATS Lab. And I’m renovating the old office at the Battery Works so I can hang out there while I supervise the conversion of the property into a showplace for my antique car collection.”

Mark had wandered over to the wide windows overlooking the surrounding high-rises and rooftops of the downtown business district. “Nice view,” he remarked, mostly to himself. Then turning to them, “Hard to believe you’d trade this in for that rundown ghetto around the old factory.”

“Was that when you discovered the toxic waste problem? What led to your suspicion that the report was falsified?” Trey asked after glaring at his brother for being so undiplomatic.

Wayne considered his answer. He didn’t trust the Smith Brothers. He wondered how much Harold had told them. He understood that they were merely window dressing, a cover designed to give the impression that the company was being proactive. He was certain nothing would come of it.

“Two things. One was that I was surprised that there was any toxic material at the site. My father prided himself on a clean operation. One of the reasons he shut down manufacturing at the old plant was that he could no longer guarantee that the safety guidelines were met. The other reason is that the old battery works has an historical value in the growth of this city and the neighborhood it supported.”

“Ah, nostalgia,” Trey nodded, “Nice when you can afford it.”

Mark had wandered over to stand in front of the wide set of bookshelves and their leather bound volumes, nodding in appreciation. “Your old man had good taste in literature. This is quite an investment in intellectual capital. All the great minds gathered in one place. Right at your fingertips.” He turned and smiled at Wayne and his brother. “And it looks like he invested in a state of the art surveillance system as well.”

To Wayne’s surprise Mark ran a hand along one edge of the bookshelves until he found what he wanted. With a faint hum a panel of books slid forward and dropped down to reveal electronics, a flat narrow box with a tiny green light glimmering in one corner.

“There’s a camera there,” Mark said pointing to a spot in the ceiling overlooking the desk. “I’ll bet I can find a mic in the desk. And probably one in the light fixture where you’re sitting. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a camera too.” He laughed. “Your old man had this place bugged!”

Next Time: What The Discs Reveal

Cheése Stands Alone IX

Crime Fiction, Pulp Fiction, Steampunk Fiction, , , , ,

by Phyllis Huldarsdottir

Cast of Characters (Partial):

Captain Lydia Cheése (pronounced “Chase”), Airship Commander for Aerosud, a luxury liner airship company based out of Sao Paulo in the Empire of Brazil, who is searching for her father, Commodore Jack Cheése, an outlaw and anti-government rabble rouser.
Professor Doctor Jean-Pierre Serre-Pain, proprietor of Madame Ophelia’s Ophidiarium, a traveling snake show, who has abducted Lydia to get her to pilot an illegal unregistered airship to HOAR (the Horn Of Africa Republic) on a mission of mercy in exchange for helping her find her father.
Serpina, a young girl who serves as Serre-Pain’s assistant and snake handler who is also a psychic Vessel.
Vlady, an older bearlike man also in the employ of Madame Ophelia’s Ophidiarium and some one that Lydia recognizes from her past.
Commodore Jack Cheése, Lydia’s father, a former officer in the Admiralty’s Medical Corp and outspoken critic of the Clockwork Commonwealth, hunted by agents of IOTA (Investigative Office of The Admiralty).
Chief Inspector Karla Kola, head of the IOTA team charged with capturing Commodore Jack Cheése and Lydia’s nemesis and pursuer.
Pyare, a young man with dreams of being an airship pilot, and member of LBFDS (the League Bousculier Francaise Du Sud) helping Lydia and Serpina rendezvous with Serre-Pain and Vlady at an illegal airship.
Pax Victoriana, a period of peace imposed by the Clockwork Commonwealth and its enforcement arm, The Admiralty, dating from the beginning of Queen Victoria’s reign to the present for a total of 180 years which includes the TSR (Temporal Shift Realignment) of 56 PV (1893 AD) after which Commonwealth calendars where recalibrated to reflect Her Royal Majesty’s peaceful rule (following the devastation of the first Pandem and its resurgence 30 years later as Pandem II).

Chapter XX

Impatient, the phony Pyare urged them to hurry. “Why are you taking so long?”

Lydia handed Serpina her trousers ripped at the seam with a shrug. “Maybe we can repair them when they’re dry. In the meantime, I’ll wear your burnoose.”

Serpina gladly shed the bulky cloak. There was a gleam in her eye as she passed the sopping clothes to the man waiting outside the door. It was fear or desperation or both. Her lithe body still garbed in wide pleated trousers and a rough pullover blocked Pyare from closing the door completely.

“Someone might see you,” he protested, “think that you are burglars. Or worse, refugees!”

“We’ll stay out of sight,” Lydia spoke over Serpina’s shoulder.

Faux Pyare stepped back to gain a new appraisal of the two women he was aiding. A smile seemed to dissipate his sullen mood. ”Yes, yes. Remain inside. I will return shortly.”

Lydia watched imposter Pyare leg it across the overgrown courtyard toward the main house. She didn’t have to say it, the look Serpina gave her said she didn’t trust him either. Something had to be done. “Can you remember anything that he said that would give us an idea of what his plans were? He had a friend. He would take us overland. Something about the clans. What else did he say?”

“He likes to talk about himself. He feels he has to prove himself. An idealist besides. And handsome. Handsome idealists are rare in real life. I remember when he spoke of his friend and I pictured them sitting at a table plotting a revolution.” Serpina gave a bemused smile. “They were in a café. The Clumsy Rabbit on rue Gilles Lapin.”

“I don’t remember any of that.”

Serpina hesitated. “I don’t think it’s a memory.”

Lydia stared at the young woman. “Pyare?”

“I think so. . . .”

“How did. . . ? Did you two entangle?”

“He is very receptive for the brave front he puts up.” She smiled to herself.

“You’re communicating with him?”

“I sense an impression.”

“In real time?”

“That’s entanglement.”

“I know that! Are you entangled with me?” Lydia asked suspiciously.

“No. You’re not receptive. Your guard is up. Like someone with something to hide or repressing a terrible emotion.”

Lydia glanced around, desperate. She and Serpina were synced in their anxiety, it was written in their expressions. “We can’t stay here.” Lydia paced the small room examining the corners, the one window from which the red door of the outbuilding could be seen.

Serpina had pulled open the top drawer to the dresser. “Nothing.”

“It doesn’t look like anyone has lived here in a while. Otherwise we would have noticed their scent.” Lydia stood in front of the  wardrobe. A small waistcoat with a hole in the elbow and white padding extruded. A frock hanging limply from a peg.

“I don’t think our new friend lived here. These are woman’s things, scarves, stockings.” Serpina said looking up from the second drawer.

Lydia had moved aside the frock. “What’s this?” Hidden behind the garment was a wide belt with a large ornate buckle. “It’s real leather.” She examined it taking it down from the peg. “What do think this represents?”

Serpina looked closely at the heavy round metal clasp depicting in profile a woman with flowing curls underneath a Phrygian cap and a bird’s wing at the temple.

“This could be precious metal,” Lydia suggested.

Serpina shook her head. “No, it’s cheap cast ore. They’re very popular at fairs and markets. That’s Frida the Fearless. That’s why the buckle has an ‘F’ on either side of the figure. Surely you know of her, the popular storybox heroine from the early years of the first Pandem. I’ve even seen old pulps of her adventures in some antiquarian stalls. People collect them.”

“I don’t pay any attention to any of that trash.” Lydia kept the belt in her hand as she cast her glance back to the small room and its furnishings. At the foot of the narrow cot was a gray overstuffed chair that was coming apart at the seams. A colorful banded blanket was folded over its back. She lifted an edge to her nose and it made her sneeze. Unfolded she held it out at arm’s length. “This will have to do,” speaking to no one in particular and wrapped it around her waist so that the hem fell just above her tall boots. She cinched the belt tight around the top of the blanket to hold it in place. “Let’s get out of here.”

Chapter XXI

Lydia led Serpina briskly down the cobbled lane of the old neighborhood in the opposite direction from where they had come with the false Pyare. They had to locate the real Pyare. Lydia kept the hood of her cloak close around her face. They’d met an elderly man pushing a velo and Serpina had asked directions to the café, The Clumsy Rabbit. He’d frowned at them suspiciously, especially at the taller Lydia and her unusual outfit. It was in a bad part of town he’d advised as he pointed the way.

The district they found themselves in was one of small tradesmen and yeoman mechanics. The streets were not paved but graded earth and gravel. The clangor of building and construction echoed in the square white washed walls of the warehouses and wide doored stalls. The scent of grime and smoke emanated from them and filled the air.

They were overtaken and passed by a few young men and boys hurrying in the direction they were headed. Soon they were joined by others hurrying toward some kind of excitement.

Where the crowd of mostly men, workers from the nearby business and factories, had congregated was a small nondescript two story building with a wide wood awning over the entrance and a handful of simple mis-matched chairs and tables announced by a sign depicting a rabbit with a crutch and a bandaged head hanging from the eaves, They had found the Clumsy Rabbit. So had the gendarmes.

Lydia kept to the fringe and peered in the direction of the activity. The police had detained four men lined up facing the side wall of the café. They were guarded by two officers while a third was shouting commands at the gathering crowd to stay back.

Serpina snaked her way through the jostling bodies and murmurs of speculation taking her to the front of the raucous crowd.

The men being detained were partially obscured in the shadow of the overhang as lengthening day worked to erase them. None of the men were Pyare. In the ever growing assembly Lydia was beginning to feel conspicuous. She and Serpina were the only women apart for an older matron talking loudly, gesticulating wildly, pointing agitatedly at the café where apparently she was the proprietress. Another officer, chevrons on his sleeves, stepped to the doorway of The Clumsy Rabbit and frowning, gazed out over the growing throng of onlookers. She noticed the two official magnovels parked to one side and a squat six seater squad halftrack blocking the roadway past the cafe into the warren of neighborhood homes and shops. The policeman at the door stepped aside as another officer pushed a man out into the light of late morning. It was Pyare.

Serpina returned with what she’s overheard. “They’re waiting for some higher official to arrive. They’re rounding up members of the League. This is one of their suspected meeting places.”

“And there is Pyare. From the frying pan into the fire.”

“That’s an odd thing to say,” Serpina commented.

“It’s an old folk saying where I come from. It makes more sense in Esporto.”

Pyare had joined the men in the shadows facing the wall. And another man was taken into the dark doorway of the café by the chevroned official.

“A prisoner transport has been dispatched to take them to the main prison in Oldest Orleans I heard someone else say. You can tell by the grumbling that these workmen are angry. They don’t like the police because it is an enforcement arm of IOTA, that the local officials do its bidding.”

“Pyare said that Leon had been arrested,” Lydia remembered. “But what is he doing here? He was supposed to take us to his friend who would help us get to Autre Lyon and Dr. Serre-Pain and Vlady.” At the mention of the man bear Serpina’s expression clouded and Lydia felt a pang of regret. Her actions had caused the change of plans for their journey to rendezvous with the illegal airship she was to pilot to the Horn of Africa. Her attempt to escape her captors had put her in danger of being apprehended by the agents of The Admiralty. If she had any doubts, the appearance of Karla Kola at the check point in Oldest Orleans earlier that morning had rendered them moot. She was now in alliance with those who had abducted her in the guise of helping her find her father, the elusive anti-Commonwealth provocateur, Commadore Jack Cheése.

Serpina spoke into the ear of a man in a welder’s hat who had come to stand in the crowd around them. The ruddy faced man looked alarmed and then nodded his head before he said something to a large coverall clad man who repeated it to the man next to him who passed it on to another  man until the message made its way through those gathered to witness the police action and caused them to surge forward in anger. The gendarme charged with holding them back raised his white baton, but it was too late. A brick was lobbed at the officers guarding the detainees. They raised their pistols and fired over the heads of the seething mass.

Lydia and Serpina were carried forward by the press of bodies and had to push against the current to extricate themselves to the fringe. But it was over quickly. No one wanted to get shot. When Lydia searched the shadows where the suspected Leaguers had been detained, there were only three and none of them was Pyare.

In that instant of confusion, Pyare had disappeared and Lydia was not the only one who had noticed. The chevroned officer barked orders and two gendarmes set off down the narrow cluttered gap between the café and the adjacent building in pursuit.

“Come,” Lydia urged and Serpina followed quickly behind. Once at a distance from the police activity, they stepped up their pace. “This street parallels the alleyway. We might be able to head them off. Hurry!”

“But the police. . . .”

“We’ll deal with them if we have to.” Lydia was tired of passively waiting for an avenue of escape. She decided that she would make happen what needed to happen. It was crucial that Pyare get them to their guide who would take them across the Massif and to the hidden airship.

They reached a corner and strolled casually across the deserted intersection. A shout and the sound of something falling or breaking alerted them to look in the direction where two gendarmes exited the alley onto the street. The policemen circled each other confused as if they had had their expectations deflated.

Lydia and Serpina continued their casual stroll as if they hadn’t noticed them hoping for reciprocal invisibility.

“Stop! You Two!” The gendarmes trotted over to confront the two women. “Did you see anyone run past here in the last minute or so? A man, shaggy hair, a maroon topcoat?”

Lydia shook her head mutely and Serpina answered in the local dialect, “No, we have seen no one.”

“Your papers,” the one who was doing the talking demanded.

Lydia glanced at Serpina and gave a slight nod. Serpina reached into her shoulder satchel as Lydia considered how she would overpower them. They were suspicious but because they were dealing with women their guard was relaxed. Two moves, maybe three, and she would incapacitate the one demanding their papers. The element of surprise would give her the advantage for the other one as well.

“No, no, this can wait till later,” the second officer insisted. “We have to find the runner. The sergeant will skin us alive if we don’t bring him back!”

The officer who had demanded their papers looked annoyed but relented, taking in Lydia’s unconventional gear, pointing a finger at her, a broken finger if she’d have her way, and commanded, “Do not leave the area. I will return to confirm you identification!”

Lydia watched them scurry into the alley across from the one they had just exited. She held up her hand and motioned to Serpina. “Wait till they’ve committed themselves to the chase.” She hurried to the entrance of the narrow alley. “Since they didn’t find him when they came through here  and we didn’t see him exit, Pyare must still be in there.”

Serpina picked her way through the clutter behind Lydia. “Yes, he is here, I can sense him.”

Lydia tried a door on one side and it was locked. She glanced around a rank of blue bio barrels. Pyare had eluded the police but where had he gone? Lydia and Serpina looked at each other and then up into the rafters of the roof overhang.

Pyare dropped to the ground between them. “How did you find me? I thought I had lost you for good.”

“No time for that now. We need to leave immediately!” Lydia pointed in the direction they had come, herding Pyare and Serpina ahead of her.

As they turned the corner out of the alley, the gendarmes were waiting for them, pistols trained on them.

“Well, well,” said the one as he moved to secure Pyare, “You were. . . .” He didn’t finish what he was going to say. Lydia sprang off the ground and launched a perfectly aimed kick at the tip of his chin, toppling him like a bag of wet sand. The other policeman turned his focus on Lydia and was about to shoot when Serpina’s satchel caught him a round house blow from behind the head. Lydia jammed the heel of her palm against his nose and levered his arm until the pistol dropped from his grip and clattered to the ground.

Pyare stooped to pick up the fallen weapons.

“Leave them!” Lydia warned, “If they catch us in possession of firearms we’ll spend the rest of our lives in the labor camps!”

“You’re right, but we have to disappear. Leon has obviously said too much. My contact, the guide who would take you through clan territory was one of those being held by the police!”

“We have no choice now but to run!” Lydia had no objection to running. She just wanted to be certain of the direction.

“We’ll have to cross the mountains on our own. I will accompany you to your destination.” He smiled at Serpina and she smiled back. “But first we have to locate my friend’s SLOTS.”

“You mean well be traveling by SLOT?” Lydia didn’t hid her displeasure. “Walking would be faster.”

“These are V models with magnetic torque. Very fast. Like a torpedo.”

Lydia was relieved. “Why didn’t you say so?”

Next Time: The Clans of the Massif

Contents Vol. 3 No. 3

Crime Fiction, Pulp Fiction, Steampunk Fiction, Western Fiction, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Welcome to Volume Three, Number Three of Dime Pulp,
A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine. 

In this issue of  Dime Pulp, A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine,  Colin Deerwood’s long running 40’s pulp detective serial, Better Than Dead, hapless city rat Lackland Ask, hiding out from the mob in the country, runs into more trouble from a shotgun toting moonshiner and his star struck daughter, and has to wonder why everyone keeps mistaking him for a dead man.

In Lydia Cheése’s post axial shift world, the reader enters an unfamiliar historical realm peopled by historically familiar names. In Phyllis Huldarsdottir’s Cheése Stands Alone, biology takes the lead as the premier science and physics is just something engineers do. The world is steam powered and airships are the primary mode of intercontinental transport. The Pax Victoriana has lasted 180  years thanks to the machinations of the Admiralty and its intelligence network, IOTA.

In Act Two, Scene 1, part 3, of Pierre Anton Taylor’s Just Coincidence, a classic tale of vengeance gone wrong with overtones and correspondences from popular illustrated hero literature, Wayne Bruce is made an offer he shouldn’t refuse and meets his nemesis, Joe Kerr, in person for the first time. His response to being targeted in a drive-by is swift and original.

FYI: Available for readers of Dime Pulp who may have missed a few issues or lost the thread of a serial,  Dime Pulp Yearbook 21, featuring the novels (The Last Resort and Better Than Dead) and the short fiction (Hard Boiled Myth and Gone Missing) of Volume One’s 12 issues,  is joined by Dime Pulp Yearbook 22, featuring the complete pulp Western, On The Road To Las Cruces, continuing episodes of  a detective story, Better Than Dead, the opening chapters of new serial novels, Just Coincidence and Cheése Stands Alone, the short fiction of Hard Boiled Myth and Polka Dot Dress, as well as Dropping A Dime’s pithy pulp observations.  Volume Two’s 10 issues are available for perusal in their entirety by simply clicking on the links in this paragraph or on the menu bar above.

If you’ve made it this far, go ahead and follow the links below to reading entertainment with the serial contents of Volume Three, Number 3

Special Note: Dime Pulp, A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine has changed its posting schedule from  monthly issues to once every forty-five days. Thus Volume Three will consist of eight issues (much to the relief of the overworked writers and production staff). Thank you for your understanding.

 —Perry O’Dickle, chief scribe
and word accountant

ask1234fi

“Lackland Ask is the name. ‘Lack’ to my friends, ‘Don’t’ to those who think they’re funny. You might have seen my portrait on the cover of Black Mask, the crime fiction magazine. This is my story. It starts with a blonde. This kind of story always starts with a blonde.” Thus begins the seemingly non-stop, endless narrative of Better Than Dead in which women are not the only trouble although most of it, told with the wit and street savvy of Runyon and Parker.

Better Than Dead—25

chase23In March of 1892, a Scotsman by the name of Arthur C. “Artie” Doyle was hanged by the neck until dead after being found guilty of a string of grisly murders of prostitutes in Whitechapel. At that moment, history veered off its presumed course and headed in a direction all its own in which the Great War never happened because the Kaiser was afraid of offending his grandmother, Queen Victoria, whose life has been prolonged by the wonders of biology. Her reign, known as the Pax Victoriana has lasted 180  years maintaining as many Victorian airs as possible while making accommodations to rapid advances in bio technology. Cheése Stands Alone poses a steampunk question, can Captain Lydia Cheése  (pronounced “Chase”) find her father, the antigovernment turncoat and radical, Commodore Jack “Wild Goose” Cheése. And furthermore, will her quest take her around the globe and through alternate world histories in the requisite 80 days or is it the beginning of a lifelong journey?

Cheése Stands Alone VIII

JCA1S3In Just Coincidence, a privileged young man with the unremarkable name of Wayne Bruce returns to the site where his father once had his business, a battery manufacturing plant, and where he often spent his childhood days hanging around the factory and the neighborhood. His return is haunted by the mysterious circumstances surrounding his father’s death and the vague feeling that his uncle is somehow involved.  Appalled by the poverty and crime of the place he remembers fondly, he is moved to resolve the injustice of the socially marginalized and to wreak vengeance on those he believes are responsible for the death of his father. A personal coincidence brings together dark prince and dark knight joined in a fateful and tragic quest for justice.

Act Two, Scene I, Part 3

Act Two, Scene 1, Part 3

Crime Fiction, Pulp Fiction, Steampunk Fiction, , , , , , , , , , ,

by Pierre Anton Taylor

Wayne made his way through Joe Kerr’s warehouse maze of shelves and bins alert to any hint that he was being followed. The door to the street was unsecured. He slipped the lock and stepped out onto the pavement before glancing back. No one was there. He pulled the collar of his long black overcoat up around his ears and set out into the blustery freezing afternoon. He didn’t expect Kerr or his goons to offer a ride back to the Battery Works.

He’d received a message on his pager when he’d been talking to the crime boss. He glanced at the readout. He knew the number. He would call Robin on a secure line when he got to the satellite phone the Lab had installed in his Plymouth Fury. Otherwise, he was looking at a slog back through the neighborhood to the Lab’s temporary office.

Trash piled up along the curbs only emphasized the squalid conditions of the old neighborhood. He’d walked these streets as a youngster reveling in the vibrant activity of manufacturing shops giving machine rhythm to his pace. Most of those were now empty lots and crumbling bricks adorned by mounds of old gray snow. Cars raced by screeching around deserted corners in a hurry to get away from nowhere going nowhere. In his memory, the streets bustled with people in and out of businesses when Central was a busy local shopping district. Now the storefronts were shuttered, their boarded windows and doors gathering litter and graffiti. A pool hall in the middle of the block was still functioning as a meeting place for truants and delinquents looking for opportunities that would likely get them arrested. He passed by giving barely a glance at the wide windowed entrance where dim overhead lighting picked out hunched shoulders and silhouetted cues.

He rolled to the ground as the sedan sped past, gunfire bursting from the passenger’s side.

On the opposite side of the street between two abandoned cars a group of youngsters were playing an improvised game of hockey on a wide patch of ice, the result of a leaking pipe from the used appliance store closed by the police as an outlet for stolen goods. They paused their game to consider the lone dark figure striding toward the bright entrance of the Korean convenience store, neon liquor logos beaming a sour red. Adult foot traffic was unusual unless they were derelicts or lost. Too easy to get jacked on foot. Anyone who was anyone had wheels even if it was just two on a board.

As Wayne approached the end of Central where it teed into Battery, Penn Quinn’s Tavern was a grimy oasis of light illuminating the dark peripheries of a fading winter afternoon at the dead end occupied by the Battery Works. By the number of cars parked along the curb, the tavern was doing good business undoubtedly drawn by a televised sports event.

A car pulled up at the corner, idling as he approached. He changed his course and crossed the street between the unoccupied parked cars. If he had to, he could duck into the bar. He was naturally suspicious, and if it was paranoia, he’d count it as a survival skill. He didn’t slacken his pace, judging the distance from the curb in front of Quinn’s to the deserted candy store across the street and further down the block to the secure gate of the Battery Works. He wasn’t going to be intimidated. He wasn’t lacking in pride which often overrode caution. His best option was to keep to the cover of the few vehicles and the abandoned van parked near the old apartment building behind the tavern.

Wayne tensed as he heard the engine rev up and glanced back in its direction. The dirty white Trans Am maneuvered slowly onto Battery, cruising slowly past as he stepped into the shadows of the abandoned van. Once the Trans Am reached the dead end of the street and would have to turn around, he planned to make a run for the gate.

His move had been anticipated. As he stepped out into the roadway, the muscle car accelerated in reverse, tires smoking. He rolled to the ground as the sedan sped past, gunfire bursting from the passenger’s side. He could hear the thud of the rounds hitting the side of the van as he made himself small and dove between the parked cars. He poked his head up to peer over the front fender of an old 50’s Dodge dreadnaught and saw the Trans Am squeal to a stop, its front end rotating ninety to point back down Central. A few more round erupted from the driver’s side before it sped away narrowly missing a motorcyclist turning onto Battery.

He stepped back out onto the roadway, the single headlight of the motorcycle bearing down on him. He put up his arm to shield his eyes. The motorcycle skidded to a halt as it reached him skidding a half circle. He recognized the 1980 Suzuki Katana and the green, red, and yellow leathers of the rider. Robin.

The visor of the black helmet went up and a smirk appeared. “Let me guess. You forgot to tip.”

“We need to follow the shooters. Find out who they are!”

Robin nodded and handed him the backpack. “Ok, hop on. You get to wear the hump.”

Wayne donned the backpack and settled in the saddle behind Robin, The Katana reared on its back wheel like a trusty paint and sped after the shooters. Their taillights were visible racing down Central. Then the brake lights blinked briefly as they took a corner and disappeared. The Suzuki was at the corner in no time at all, cutting in behind a passing car making the turn. They were headed toward the Arnold Expressway. The Suzuki was closing fast as the Trans Am made for the onramp. At the last minute it swerved off, jumping the low barrier, and sped down the surface street running under the overpass.

The Suzuki leapt the divide to follow, fishtailing as it landed, Wayne gripping the frame with his knees and clutching the sides of Robin’s leathers.

An arm and a shoulder appeared out of the passenger side along with a muzzle flash and then another. Wayne tapped Robin on the shoulder and pointed to the side of the road, “Pull over!”

As they watched the car speed away, Wayne shook his head. “Not worth getting you shot over this. I have an idea.” He pointed after the car disappearing from view. “They’re heading for the gravel pits and the abandoned asphalt plant. There’s no exit in that direction. Maybe they think we’ll follow them and they can ambush us.” He indicated the dirt track going up the side of the embankment. “I used to ride dirt bikes up that way as a kid. The main rail line from the cement factory is up there too. They’re going to have to take a detour around the gravel pits and pass under the railroad trestle bridge before they get to the asphalt plant. That’s where they’re likely to make their stand. If we go offroad we can beat them to the bridge.”

Robin didn’t need any urging, goosing the Suzuki up the narrow dirt path among the frozen weeds and the low tangle of wiry shrubs. The ground was muddy in spots but they crested the rise and came up to the railroad track. The gravel and rock along the rail bed was enough to give them traction and the Katana raced toward the trestle bridge that crossed the ravine and the unpaved road below.

From that vantage Wayne could see the Trams Am skirting the largest of the water filled gravel pits the size of a small lake. He hopped off the saddle and sprinted to the edge of the bridge, searching for something. He bent down and found a large black railroad tie that had been abandoned at the side of the tracks. He ran back to Robin. “You wouldn’t have a rope in that backpack would you. And I’m going to need your helmet.”

“No rope, just some cargo bungees I use to tie down the bike with in the back of my pickup.” Robin unclasped the chin strap, pulling the helmet up and letting the cascade orange hair fall to her shoulders. “I hope you’re not thinking of jumping off the bridge. This is a very expensive helmet.” Concern didn’t show on her rosy cheeked pale complexion.

Wayne has zipped open the backpack and removed the two long bungee cords. “What are these, three footers?”

Robin nodded, “Yeah, and they’ll stretch to twice that length. You’re not thinking of doing what I think you’re going to do?” she asked with bright surprise.

“That remains to be seen. What else have you got in here?” Wayne held up a can of black spray paint.

Robin blushed, accentuating her robin breast red hair. “Uh, a little hobby I indulge myself in my off hours.” She laughed and then, “A girl’s got to have a life, especially after dark. Besides, someone’s got to save the world.”

Wayne could see the Trans Am taking the final bend around the gravel pit and heading toward the trestle bridge. Then he heard it before he saw it, the large diesel engine with its bright cyclopean eye taking up the horizon of the tracks and sounding a few warning hoots of its horn.

Helmet on his head, he collected the bungees, slipping the can of spray paint into his pocket, and raced to the trestle bridge. He lifted the nine foot long railroad tie to his shoulder and then walking the rumbling rail like a tightrope to put himself directly over the road below. The large diesel hooted frantically as it approached, a shriek of brakes being fruitlessly applied. He could see through the gaps in the rails that the Trans Am was still kicking up dust as it began passing under the bridge. He had to time it just right. He let the tie drop, and not waiting to gauge the impact, loosened the two bungees, hooking them together with one end attached to the gleaming smooth steel of the rail. He jumped.

It was easily a thirty foot drop and he had to release his grip when the bungees reached full extension, not before, and not after it began retracting. But the diesel didn’t allow him that choice. He felt the tug as the bungee caught but almost immediately as it passed overhead, the slack as he fell the rest of the way to the road below. He landed hard rolling forward to lessen the impact as he’d been taught in sky diving practice. His right shoulder and the helmet caught the brunt of the shock in the somersault to land him shakily on his feet.

Wayne snatched up the weapon and pointed it at the kid trying to squeeze himself past the wood pillar.

The dirty white Trans Am had skidded to a stop further down the dirt road, it’s front end hanging perilously over the ice caked waters of a gravel pond. The railroad tie had impaled the roof just behind the windshield like a toothpick through a club sandwich.

Wayne reached the driver as he staggered out from the wrenched open door of the skewered muscle machine. He was a short stocky man in a red hooded sweatshirt with a chrome .45 in his hand. He appeared bewildered, looking back at his wheels with the creosote ornament and then at the dark helmeted figure nearly on top of him. He raised the gun at Wayne. He did not expect the cloud of misted black paint to blind him. He shrieked clawing at his eyes.

Wayne head butted him sending the man to his knees. He kicked the gun out of the driver’s hand and it skittered across the frozen dirt of the road, over the berm at the edge the gravel pit, and settled on the thin ice crust which gave way under its weight and sank from view.

Wayne heard the yells, and calls for help, from the passenger trapped inside the two door sedan. He ducked his head in to catch a glimpse of the inside and a shot brushed him back. The passenger, a big overweight kid with a short dark ponytail, was stuck with the choice of opening the door on his side over the frigid waters of the pit or crawling out through the driver’s side. The railroad tie was blocking one option. The dirty white hardtop was on the verge of tipping into the gravel pond from the passenger’s struggle with obstacle.

“Help me out, please, I promise I won’t shoot!

“Throw you gun out and then we can talk.” Wayne kicked the rear bumper for emphasis.

“Okay, okay!” The chrome pistol careened off the door frame before dropping to the ground.

Wayne snatched up the weapon and pointed it at the kid trying to squeeze himself past the wood pillar.

“No, no, don’t shoot!” he pleaded falling back against his door and causing the car to wobble a little more.

Satisfied the panic was genuine or he would have used another weapon if he’d had one, Wayne tossed the chrome to join its twin in the drink. Hopping on the trunk and then the roof, he set his shoulder on the protruding tie, wrapped his arms around it and pulled up. It didn’t budge. The tottering car shifted forward.

The shooter inside screamed, “What are you doing?!”

Wayne tried again, giving the tie a twist and another tug to loosen it, and pulled it up part way. He jumped to the ground as the kid scramble to get his bulk across the seats for the open door. The combined motion of the two caused the Trans Am to shift its center of gravity and the front end slowly started sliding into the pond.

The kid began a panicked wail as Wayne edge to the door and tossed in one end of the bungee cord. Bracing himself on the berm, he held tight and pulled when he felt the tension of the bungee in the kid’s grip. The Trans Am lurched sideways, the right front submerged. Stretched to the limit, the line allowed the kid to pull himself free from the sinking sedan scrambling through the pond’s edge. Wayne hauled him up and over the berm like an old truck tire.

He set his boot on the large boy’s back as he tried to get up. “You made a mistake. Whoever put you up to this made a mistake. Killing someone is a mistake. Missing them is an even bigger mistake.”

“No, no,” the kid protested, “we wasn’t supposed to kill him! Just scare him is all.”

“You should be the one who is scared. Vengeance is swift for those who commit crimes on my turf,” he growled, “I’m the new boss and what I say goes. Pass it around.” Over his shoulder, the Trans Am continued in its icy baptism by showing its underside, lurching forward, sinking deeper.

Later that evening, the East Central precinct sent a patrol car to investigate the report of gunfire near the railroad overpass on the road to the old asphalt plant. They found two men secured to the beams of the trestle bridge with bungee cords and a sedan that had been reported stolen earlier in the day partially submerged in a gravel pit.

Next Time: Act II, Scene 2, Part 1—The Case For Murder.

Cheése Stands Alone VIII

Crime Fiction, Pulp Fiction, Steampunk Fiction, , , , , , , , ,

by Phyllis Haldursdottir

Chapter XVII

Lydia watched from the shadows of a river willow above the expanse of the Loire marshes as Pyare negotiated with the stooped dark shrouded figure. He shook his head and waved his hands, showing fingers. The shrouded figure turned and walked away. Pyare held up his arms in surrender, shouting something, and the booter stopped. Further negotiations ensued. Then he raised an arm to summon them.

Lydia followed as Serpina hurried down from the copse where they had been hidden. Lydia was surprised to find that the booter Pyare had engaged as their guide was an old woman with lively dark eyes, her nose and mouth hidden behind the scarf that also enveloped her head. The dark eyes took the trio in with little curiosity and then turned immediately to  disappear into the tall tangle of reeds and shrubs. Pyare signaled them to follow. Lydia exchanged glances with Serpina and scrambled after the guide through the low brush.

A stench of death and decay accompanied them along the barely visible track. The expanse of marsh was not uniformly flat. Small mounds and sandbars alternated with patches and bands of oozing oleaginous mire. Some stretches of the bog were safe enough to trod through although the wet clay clung to their feet and threatened to cement them in place. They had to move quickly and lightly, the sound of the suctioning mud reminding them of the fate that awaited them if they lingered. The old woman outpaced them, seeming to skim over the surface of the marsh, not waiting on them.

Lydia glanced back over her shoulder. Pyare was nowhere in sight.

Lydia caught a movement in the reeds out of the corner of her eye. Serpina had seen it, too. “Rats,” she breathed in Lydia’s ear, “Big rats.” They quickened their steps to reach a mound that rose out of the muck. Once over the top, the populated far bank their destination was now in view. Their mud clotted feet descended onto a broad marshy plain dotted with little islands of vegetation. Here the water visibly flowed and the guide stopped to examine the water’s edge until she found a number of partially submerged rocks which she lithely stepped across to firmer ground. They were to follow. Serpina went first, splashing quickly across, a look of satisfaction brightening her worried countenance. Pyare indicated that he would bring up the rear and had Lydia proceed ahead of him.

Scrambling across Lydia caught the shadow of something flitting over the surface of the water. she looked up, distracted, thinking that it was a large bird and missed her step, a foot plunging deep into the icy flow, soaking her thoroughly. She felt strong hands grasp her arm to help her onto the bank and met the determined look of the old woman and then past her at the object set against the lightening sky.

It was na SOB, a Single Operator Biowing. She had flown them herself when she had been stationed in the transport pool at the Commonwealth embassy in Greater Houllas, the capitol of the United Slave State Republics. They were used by IOTA for surveillance. She could tell by the SOB’s altitude that it was surveying a large area near the bridge crossings. And she knew enough about its telemetry that there was a certainty that their variances had been registered. The scanners would indicate their heat signatures as data sets, executing alignment searches for anomalies in the performing patterns, and relay the biofo to an entangled platform monitor, sometimes half a planet away.

The old woman was making urgent noises and pointing to the underbrush prompting them to take cover. Lydia glanced back over her shoulder. Pyare was nowhere in sight.

Chapter XVIII

Could it get any worse? Lydia glanced around, wet but alert. It was just Serpina and her and the old woman to guide them to the far bank. They had to keep going. But once they got there, without Pyare, they would have no idea how to continue. The look on Serpina’s face saying she understood their predicament, they hurried behind the old booter who did not once look back, lithely skipping from the marshy island to the wider rubble strewn shore and then up stone steps to the settlement that crowded the river’s edge.

Lydia paused at the top of the stone embankment to look back. There was no sign of the brash young man who said he had a plan. The old woman pointed down a long street crowded with homes and shops and set off in the opposite direction. They were on their own.

The sun had risen above the morning haze and sounds of doors slamming and feet thumping and scurrying as daily activity came into the light. Their rough work cloaks were not out of place  among the passing populace, many riding or pushing velos, opening shops, setting up tables in the crowded narrow lanes. There was a queue for the java bar with its large copper kettles. And they were lost. Pyare was to meet up with someone who would then take them overland through the Massif. But who was he, and how could they find him?

“You are not the Pyare we are looking for,” Lydia spoke frostily. “We’ll just wait here until the Pyare we want meets with us.”

Serpina touched Lydia’s sleeve and nodded in the direction of the java bar where a man had detached himself from the throng of java juicers and was coming their way.

Lydia perceived the threat. He was of average height, perhaps a little shorter than her, a muscled dark face with a wispy chin beard, wiry in a cocksure manner. If she had to, she could subdue him, and as a reminder, the stiletto in the sheath of her snake skin jacket nudging a rib beneath the soaked burnoose. She kept him in focus as he walked past them and met his sideways glance. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him pause a few paces past them and then turn. Serpina stepped into the shadows of the nearby doorway.

“Hey, you two look lost,” he said approaching and eyeing them curiously. His knit faux-laine hat had earflaps and he was trying on a smile. “Maybe I can help you,” her leered on the word “help”.

“Do you know Pyare?” Serpina asked emerging from the shadows.

The man looked startled and then laughed. “I am Pyare! Why do you ask?”

“She means a different Pyare,” Lydia replied, suspicious of the man’s intent and his addressing them in standard rather than in the local patois. “A taller man, younger.” Their disguise as laborers was thin at best.

The man sighed, “Yes, that’s the way it always is, isn’t it? Always taller and younger.”

“Do you know another young man names Pyare?” Serpina tried.

“Ah, a love interest, perhaps? I wish I were that lucky Pyare.”

Serpina blushed. “You are not the Pyare we are looking for,” Lydia spoke frostily. “We’ll just wait here until the Pyare we want meets with us.”

“You are all wet!” dark Pyare said, pointing at her and shaking his head. “You are not from around here that is easy to tell. If you stand around too long, you will be reported for soliciting. Then what will you tell your tall young Pyare?” He laughed to show his big teeth.

“What would you suggest we do?” asked Serpina sweetly.

The man’s face brightened. “Ladies, please, let me assist you. I have a domicile close by, and a high speed heat extractor which belongs to my landlady but she will let me use it and we can dry your wet clothing.”

Lydia thought to refuse but it occurred to her that they had nowhere else to go and the man’s offer would allow them time to reconsider and reconnoiter how to proceed. Serpina had apparently come to the same conclusion. “So kind of you, and you are right, we are strangers here. Lead the way.”

Chapter XIX

Following the man who called himself Pyare down the narrow lane between the backs of houses and vacant lots, barking dogs and scrambling cats, feral or illegally kept as pets in violation of the Pax Victoriana Proclamation On The Interaction Protocols With Nonhuman Sentient Beings, Lydia spoke in a bare whisper her caution. “I don’t trust him but we have no choice. To remain in public will only expose us to discovery. Be alert to his actions and stay close to me. I can deal with him if he tries anything.” She set her lips resolute with what she was capable of as an assertion to Serpina.

The man in the knit hat and floppy flaps glanced over his shoulder at the sound of her voice and grinned. “Just a little further,” he indicated with an arm outstretched in the direction they were heading. Faces appeared in windows as they paraded by, a woman scrubbing a stairwell entrance to a doorway looked up briefly to pass a wrist across her brow and glance at them with questioning eyes. They halted abruptly in front of a square structure with white plaster walls and a red faux coral tile roof. A low barrier wall enclosed the dirt and weeds of the unattended yard. They followed him to the blue door where he stopped and rapped on it sharply three times.

“I live around the back.” He pointed to the moss covered flagstones making a path leading around the corner of the house. “Madame will likely let you use the expeller to dry your cloak and trousers.” A look of confusion flashed across his face. “I’m sorry. I do not know your names.” And he shrugged at the afterthought, “in case Madame asks.”

Lydia was about to speak her name when she remembered the false papers Leon had provided her. “My name is Odette and this is. . . .” She indicated Serpina as she realized that she didn’t know the name the young girl was using.

“Addie!” Serpina spoke up, smiling at her secret joke.

“Very well, Addie and Odette, Madame may require a small consideration for the use of her machine,” he said as the door creaked partially open and in the narrow shadow of the darkened room behind her, a woman in a bright headscarf frowned at them. The man talked rapidly in the local patois, gesticulating dramatically, pointing to the house and then to the two women in the rough brown worker’s cloaks, all the while smiling and bowing in abject supplication.

The woman in the doorway was not amused or convinced by the obsequious display and looked them over suspiciously. She spoke forcefully, pointing to the palm of her hand, and with a final word slammed the door.

A hookah on the self above the headboard dangled its ebony tipped hose over the side, a shapeless blanket crumpled beneath it.

The man who called himself Pyare tried to hide his disappointment by laughing. “Madame is a busy woman but she will allow the use of the extractor if you are kind to her. She is in a bad mood because people take advantage of her generous nature. You must be generous in return.”

He led them around the corner of the larger dwelling to a smaller square structure with similar white plaster walls and a dingy yellow door. An orange cat scampered away at their approach. He fumbled with the latch and then shouldered the door open. He laughed as he led them inside. “The door always sticks. I should complain to the landlord but then she’d ask for the rent.”

They were standing in a small square room with a barred casement window on one wall, an alcove with a mottled and stained uni, a large scorch mark on the wall behind it. A stale scent assaulted their noses, an air that had not been disturbed in a while with hints of burnt wood and charred organic matter over the pungency of sour mold. A mattress on a low frame was pushed against the windowless wall. A hookah on the self above the headboard dangled its ebony tipped hose over the side, a shapeless blanket crumpled beneath it. A large wardrobe stood against the wall next to the alcove. The stone paved floor revealed its previous purpose as a garden shed.

“If you will remove your wet clothing, I will stand outside and Addie can hand them to me. And if you have an appreciation for Madame’s generosity, now would be most useful.” He stepped outside and pulled the door closed.

“I think this is called getting in on the ground floor,” Lydia said shucking the wet burnoose. The extent of the soaking the mired pants had taken was obvious. She felt along the seam at the back. “And my rear has come apart.”

Next Time: Escape To The Country

Better Than Dead—25

Crime Fiction, Pulp Fiction, Steampunk Fiction, Western Fiction, , , , , , , , ,

by Colin Deerwood

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“Don’t shoot!” I called out. I didn’t raise my hands lest the Scout toppled over. Besides I was getting tired of having people poke guns at me,

The man in the peaked hat with the insignia above the bill grinned at first like he’d just won something. Then he looked at the gun in his hand like he didn’t know how it got there. Feeling foolish, he got angry at having been caught out.

“You should know better than to sneak up on a man from behind like that!” He thumbed the badge pinned to his shirt pocket that looked like it might have come as a prize in a box of Cracker Jacks, “I’m an officer of the law! And I got every right to shoot you where you stand!” He holstered his revolver like it was a bother and gave me a squint from under a hedge of eyebrow. He had a nose that sat on his face like a large pickled strawberry. What passed for a moustache hovered crookedly over a mouth of bad teeth.

“What seems to be the problem, Sheriff? Have I broken the law?” I asked, pretending not to notice the patch of wet that had bloomed at the front of his trousers.

“This here is my jurisdiction.” He touched the butt of the gun with a finger.

He raised what little chin he had for a try at a haughty glare. “Well, tresspassin’ for one. And who’s to say you are the owner of that there motor-sickle. It might not belong to you.” He rested his hand on the butt of his revolver.

“I’m not trespassing, Sheriff, I got permission to be here seeing as how I’m related to the old gal who used to own this cabin.”

“That so. What’d her name be then?”

He had me there. All I ever called her was granny. But then I remembered a little game she played with us when we were kids and we wanted a sweet from her. “You ask nice,” she’d say, “cause that’s my name.”

“We only called her granny because it would have been disrespectful to call her by her given name, and of course she wasn’t my real granny, more of a great aunt a couple times removed. But if I recall, seems someone referred to her as Eunice.”

He nodded like I’d passed a test. “I ain’t the Sherrif. The name’s Thorndyke, Alvin Thorndyke. I’m the Constable from over in Ridley.”

“A little out of your jurisdiction, ain’t you, Chief?” I offered and watched the slow coloring of his wan cheeks.

“This here is my jurisdiction.” He touched the butt of the gun with a finger. “I’m looking out for a friend. Don’t want no hobo settin’ up camp out here.”

“I’m not hobo, Marshal, you can ask my cousin, Ruthie Walker. She knows I’m staying here at the Ask family cabin, doing some cleaning up and repairs since nobody’s been out here since Uncle Ned passed.” I lowered my eyes, solemn like. “And Ruthie knows I borrowed old Ned’s Indian to get around.”

I could almost hear the gears turning under his hat. “What d’you say your name was?”

I figured him for a blowhard with an exaggerated sense of self-importance. I ignored him while I parked the motorcycle and undid the saddlebags to take them inside the cabin. When I turned to face him, he was giving me that suspicious look again.

“I didn’t say, but you just reminded me of something. Maybe you can help me.”

The constable wasn’t too certain how to take the request and cocked his head to one side. “How so?”

“Well, I’ve been meaning to pay my respects to granny and Uncle Ned but I realized that I don’t know where the cemetery is that they’re buried in. Now I suppose I could ask Cousin Ruthie but I don’t want to bother her more than I have to, she seems to have a lot on her hands with them youngsters. Can you direct me?”

It was like I pulled his earlobe and a light came on. He gave me a grin that I was sure I didn’t want to see too often. “That’s right Christian of you, son. Not only can I show you, but I can take you there!”

And that’s how I ended up in Thorny’s jalopy heading back toward Ridley.

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You didn’t have to be a detective to figure Thorny out, he gave the store away whether he realized it or not. First he warned me about my neighbor, a trigger happy moonshiner, said to have killed a man or two in the wild wooly days before repeal. And his daughter was man crazy, headed for perdition if she didn’t change her ways. Nothing a good husband couldn’t fix.

He gave me the lowdown on the farmer who had the stand down on Lake Road. The raggedy scarecrow of a man was known as Three-Fingers McKay. He’d lost them in a fight at a roadhouse near Grover City. “He was a lowdown drunk until he found Jesus and the Widow Larson who lost her man over there where we dint got no business being.” He shook his head. “Sad story,” and then glared at me with a sidelong glance.

“I would have joined up myself but as I was sole support of my dear widowed mother, rest her soul, I was given a deferment. In thanks to the Lord for saving me from almost certain death in the mud of a foreign land, I served him as a chaplain over at the county jail, the youngest man to hold that post in the history of the State.

“I also worked as a youth councilor at one of the all-girl summer camps they have around here. That was the toughest work I’ve ever done. You get that many young gals together at one time and you end up with packs of she-wolves, circling each other, looking to dig their claws into each other. It was enough to make your hair stand on end. It was my saving grace and blessing when my cousin, Sylvester Boone, became president of the town council after being the constable for many years and passed the post on to me. I was probably around your age, and I have to say, I have served proudly upholding law and order for the citizens of Ridley.

“And let me tell you, it hasn’t been an easy job, especially the way things are in this country right now. I’ve had to deal with my share of hobos and drifters. My words to them when I catch them, don’t let the sun go down before you’re gone. I got enough to do with the ruffians and layabouts who belong here.” He frowned at me and nodded. “Your cousins, I’m sorry to say, among them. That bunch went wild after the old gal died. . .’scuse, I meant to say, the Widow Ask, and her son Ned, well, the heart went out of him about then, too. He’d had a tough lot what with the war. All he cared about was fishing and drinking, and that consarned motor sickle. Didn’t matter no how to him that his nieces and nephews was raising holy hell with their drunken carrying on, almost burned the house down around them. Those boys, they were always in fights, especially with any boys who came around to see their girl cousins. Even when they’d been invited.

“County Sheriff, wonder what he’s up to?” he asked himself as the large dark Dodge sped past, the man in uniform at the wheel glancing briefly at them.

“And they let that wonderful apple orchard the widow had go to seed. I can’t count the times I pinched apples from those trees. And of course the cider she sold around town was loved by all. I just felt it was my duty to do something about it. After a while those boys got tired of spending their nights in the pokey with the town drunks. They got the message. They were better off being some place not in my jurisdiction. Some of them try to squirrel back, but I catch ‘em.” He smiled at the thought of that.

“And the girls, most ‘er gone or married. The big city attracts them like moths, they think they can do better. But I seen some come back, too, worse for the wear, and by then what man is gonna to want ‘em? Except for Missus Walker. She was the one who cared for the Widow toward the end. There was a will. She was very generous. Maybe too generous. And Missus Walker inherited the house. I look in on her now and then. She’s had some hard luck. One husband left, part because of the goings on at the Ask house and part because there was no work for a man in these parts unless you want to be a busboy or dishwasher. And you have to know that Paul and Polly are a handful without a strong man to put his foot down. Except for the father of little Angel, but he’s a waiter at one of the resorts in Big Lake. Man can’t raise a family on what they pay, and from what I’ve heard, he likes to play the odds.” He lifted his hand off the steering wheel and shook his fist like he was holding dice. “Can’t say she didn’t pick a good looking one, but something about him bothers me.” And put a finger to the side of his nose.

A large powerhouse hove into view. I could tell by the headlight arrangement and the twin spots that it was official. Only the government could afford that much chrome. It was speeding headlong toward us, crowding the centerline of the narrow country road.

It caught Thorny by surprise. He grunted in alarm and steered for the shoulder of the road. “County Sheriff, wonder what he’s up to?” he asked himself as the large dark Dodge sped past, the man in uniform at the wheel glancing briefly at him.

“Yep, he’s in a hurry to get somewhere. Wonder if he’s late.” I offered.

Thorny looked at me like I was an idiot which I figured was to my advantage.

“No, something is going on.” He looked over his shoulder and was about to pull out onto the road when another patrol car hove into view and passed at high speed. “Now I’m positive. Probably something to do with that missing gal.”

“A girl is missing?” I thought of Rebecca. It was still eating me alive.

“Oh, probably just some youngster has run away with big ideas in her head. Or,” he considered the possibility, “got knocked up by some summer vacationer. Happens all the time. And they come back, dragging their bastards with them in the walk of shame.”

I could see that Thorny could be a self-righteous ass but I kept that to myself.

A mile or so down the road he pointed at a hillock topped with a few large oaks and a wrought iron arch over a gravel track.

“Coming up on it here,” he steered onto a driveway where a sign announced Morton Heights Cemetery, All Denominations, 1832.

The road led up to beneath the oaks. Thorny knew the way up through the rows of burial plots, some more elaborate than others. Granny’s larger stone held court over all of the dead relatives of which there were more than I realized. Ned’s stone was the freshest, least weathered. The dates said he was only eighteen years older than me.

My old man hated his youngest brother. Not in so many words but through his arrogance toward him, resentful because he was his mother’s favorite. I’d overheard him telling my mother that his brother was illegitimate. I didn’t understand at the time, only that granny had done something with someone other than grandpa who might as well have been a faded picture behind glass on the wall for all that I remembered of him. I remember my mother defending Ned and the beginning of an argument, one of many, where my old man would win by a knock out.

Otherwise I could have cared less for the dirt encased bones beneath my feet. I was at the cemetery for an entirely different reason. I’d given it some serious thought. If I was going to vanish, I was going to need a different identity. Lackland Ask was going to have to disappear and in his place would have to be a verifiable person, someone with a birth certificate and a death certificate. Someone my age who had died young enough so that no one could tell the difference. That had been my plan all along. Thorny had just provided the opportunity and was familiar enough with the populace to provide some background if need be. Still being there did have its effect and I removed my dark glasses and rubbed my eyes.

Thorny cleared his throat. “Mighty fine woman,” he said huskily, and I knew he meant it. “I get choked up myself at the thought of these good people. I can tell by your eyes going red. No need to be ashamed.”

I didn’t want to tell him that my eyes had been watering and red for nearly wo weeks and the dark glasses were the only thing that kept them from brimming with tears in bright daylight. I walked away from the family site and lit up a cigarette, glancing at the headstones, many dating from the last century, none in an age range to be of any use to me. I’d figured my idea to be a bust as Thorny joined me at his ragtop and started to get in the driver’s seat. On the downside of the hill were a couple dozen dingy headstones in overgrown plots.

“Who is buried down there?” I asked as I stepped down the hill and into the first row of graves.

He followed to the edge of the gravel patch. “Them’s paupers graves, some of them from the influenza.”

I stood in front of a row of five headstones. The large one inscribed with the name Jedediah Paulson had lived forty years, and his loving wife, Sara, five years less, and their three children, all had died within the same year. The youngest was my age. He was nine when he died.

Thorny stepped down next to me. “Paulson. I remember about them. Cousin Sylvester said they was found in their little shack out by the rail line, all dead. Said it was the Spanish flu though I can’t tell you why they called it that, maybe that’s where it come from. They were pretty far gone when someone come up on them.” He shook his head and walked away. “Sad story.”

I took the note of the name, Jerome Paulson, born nineteen and eleven.

At one point in the sober drive back to Little Lake, Thorny turned to me and said, “I know your name ain’t Dick Sales.” He laughed like he knew a secret when he said it.

“I don’t think I ever said it was.”

“I know your real name. Sam Carter.” There was a hint of triumph in his revelation. And he revealed his source. “Paul told me. He heard you tell his mother. A fine lad, that boy. He has my ear.”

I was about to set him straight when I saw the dark car parked partially blocking the road ahead. I didn’t have to say it. Thorny said it for me. “Roadblock.”

I needed a roadblock like a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

Next Time: The Missing Girls

Contents Vol. 3 No. 2

Crime Fiction, Pulp Fiction, Steampunk Fiction, Western Fiction, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Welcome to Volume Three, Number Two of Dime Pulp,
A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine. 

In this issue of  Dime Pulp, A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine,  Colin Deerwood’s long running 40’s pulp detective serial, Better Than Dead, hapless city rat Lackland Ask, hiding out from the mob in the country, runs into more trouble from a shotgun toting moonshiner and his star struck daughter, and has to wonder why everyone keeps mistaking him for a dead man.

In Lydia Cheése’s post axial shift world, the reader enters an unfamiliar historical realm peopled by historically familiar names. In Phyllis Huldarsdottir’s Cheése Stands Alone, biology takes the lead as the premier science and physics is just something engineers do. The world is steam powered and airships are the primary mode of intercontinental transport. The Pax Victoriana has lasted 180  years thanks to the machinations of the Admiralty and it’s intelligence network, IOTA.

In Act Two, Scene 1, part 2, of Pierre Anton Taylor’s Just Coincidence, a classic tale of vengeance gone wrong with overtones and correspondences from popular illustrated hero literature, Wayne Bruce is made an offer he shouldn’t refuse and meets his nemesis in person for the first time.

FYI: Available for readers of Dime Pulp who may have missed a few issues or lost the thread of a serial  Dime Pulp Yearbook 21, featuring the novels (The Last Resort and Better Than Dead) and the short fiction (Hard Boiled Myth and Gone Missing) of Volume One’s 12 issues,  is joined by Dime Pulp Yearbook 22, featuring the complete pulp Western, On The Road To Las Cruces, continuing episodes of  a detective story, Better Than Dead, the opening chapters of new serial novels, Just Coincidence and Cheése Stands Alone, the short fiction of Hard Boiled Myth and Polka Dot Dress, as well as Dropping A Dime’s pithy pulp observations of Volume Two’s 10 issues, and ready for perusal in their entirety by simply clicking on the links in this paragraph or on the menu bar above.

If you’ve made it this far, go ahead and follow the links below to reading entertainment with the serial contents of Volume Three, Number 2

Special Note: Dime Pulp, A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine has changed its posting schedule from  monthly issues to once every forty-five days. Thus Volume Three will consist of eight issues (much to the relief of the overworked writers and production staff). Thank you for your understanding.

 —Perry O’Dickle, chief scribe
and word accountant

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“Lackland Ask is the name. ‘Lack’ to my friends, ‘Don’t’ to those who think they’re funny. You might have seen my portrait on the cover of Black Mask, the crime fiction magazine. This is my story. It starts with a blonde. This kind of story always starts with a blonde.” Thus begins the seemingly non-stop, endless narrative of Better Than Dead in which women are not the only trouble although most of it, told with the wit and street savvy of Runyon and Parker.

Better Than Dead—24

chase23In March of 1892, a Scotsman by the name of Arthur C. “Artie” Doyle was hanged by the neck until dead after being found guilty of a string of grisly murders of prostitutes in Whitechapel. At that moment, history veered off its presumed course and headed in a direction all its own in which the Great War never happened because the Kaiser was afraid of offending his grandmother, Queen Victoria, whose life has been prolonged by the wonders of biology. Her reign, known as the Pax Victoriana has lasted 180  years maintaining as many Victorian airs as possible while making accommodations to rapid advances in bio technology. Cheése Stands Alone poses a steampunk question, can Captain Lydia Cheése  (pronounced “Chase”) find her father, the antigovernment turncoat and radical, Commodore Jack “Wild Goose” Cheése. And furthermore, will her quest take her around the globe and through alternate world histories in the requisite 80 days or is it the beginning of a lifelong journey?

Cheése Stands Alone VII

JCA1S3In Just Coincidence, a privileged young man with the unremarkable name of Wayne Bruce returns to the site where his father once had his business, a battery manufacturing plant, and where he often spent his childhood days hanging around the factory and the neighborhood. His return is haunted by the mysterious circumstances surrounding his father’s death and the vague feeling that his uncle is somehow involved.  Appalled by the poverty and crime of the place he remembers fondly, he is moved to resolve the injustice of the socially marginalized and to wreak vengeance on those he believes are responsible for the death of his father. A personal coincidence brings together dark prince and dark knight joined in a fateful and tragic quest for justice.

Act Two, Scene I, Part 2

Better Than Dead—24

Crime Fiction, Pulp Fiction, Steampunk Fiction, , , , , , ,

by Colin Deerwood

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She was all over me like butter on scotch. I knew my next move would decide if I was going to be staring down the double barrel of a shotgun or not. I was torn by the urge to pull her in close or pushing her away. I looked at that young face and I saw Rebecca, innocence yet passion.

“Listen,” I said “you. . . .”

She was passing her young lips all over my face and my neck, whispering in my ear, “Oh, Ned, Ned, I knew you’d come back to me!”

So that was it. “Ok, kid, you gotta calm down. You got me mixed up with someone else.” I held her by by the shoulders and pushed her away. “I’m not Ned. And if I do look like him, it’s just the family resemblance.”

“Oh no, Ned, you’ve come back just like you said you would!”

“Ok, let’s get one thing straight. I ain’t no ghost and I’m certainly not Uncle Ned back from the dead.”

She tried to put her arms around my neck and I held her wrists.

“But you look so much like the picture of him when he was younger and I think it looks just like you do right now except you’re not wearing a uniform. And he told me that if he could be that young again he would come and get me and take me away with him! And that’s just what he, you did!”

Now I knew I was dealing with nutty and the only way to deal with nutty is to be nutty right back. “Sorry to disappoint you, Marie. I’m not Ned and I can’t be Ned for you either.”

She gave me a fierce pout and was about to answer me back.

“Let me explain why.” I put on my most serious and somber air. “You see I just lost a loved one, a girl, in fact, just a little older than you.”

“Was she your girlfriend?!” she demanded.

“Well, I was hoping to make her my girlfriend but then she died.”

Her mouth went sad but her eyes were smiling. “Oh,” she muttered, “I’m sorry.” And then, “What did she look like?”

“She looked like a movie star.”

Her eyes brightened. “Oh, which one, which one?”

Now she had me. I’d been to a lot of movies but I could never remember any of the names of the dames. “What’s her name, the blonde with the grapefruit?”

“Oh I know, Jean Harlow!”

“Yeah, but more of a brunette and kinda classy.”

“Mina Loy?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Carole Lombard?” She narrowed her eyes in frustration. “Katherine Hepburn!”

“Yeah, that’s it, but younger.”

I watched her picture the face of the actress. “What was her name?”

I was surprised that it was difficult to speak it. “Becky, Rebecca.” And the ledge four stories up where she took her fall was still very clear.

I got a look of sympathy. “How did she die?”

It took me a bit to form the words. “She fell. From a building.”

“Oh, a suicide.”

“No, she and I were running away from a gang of crooks when the radio bomb blew up and she lost her footing trying to reach the fire escape.”

By the look in her eyes, she was stunned by disbelief.

“You see, I’m a newspaper reporter and I was investigating a mob boss who turned out to belong to the Black Hand. Becky was a cub reporter following me around cause I was supposed to be showing her the ropes, but we got too close to the bad guys. And she died. It happened just a few days ago, not more than a week. And that’s why I’m up here. The cops are after me because they want to know what I uncovered. The mob is after me to keep me from revealing what I uncovered. And then there’s the Thieves of Bombay out for revenge.”

I might have overdone it. Her eyes were shining.

“I don’t care if you’re Ned or not, I’m in love with you!” she said advancing with a youthful ardor.

“Once when I was swimming naked like I do on a full moon night because I read about a movie star who did that, he saw me. And when he stood up to walk away, I saw that he had a stiffy.

I heard it, and she heard it too, a shuffling and heavy breathing. I thought maybe it was the bear and turned in that direction and when I turned back, she was gone. Then I saw him, lumbering up the path, red faced beneath the ragged straw hat. He was carrying a shotgun. He nodded to me as I stepped out onto the porch.

“Ifn I believed in ghosts I‘d say you was one. Marie said you was. I knowed him after he come back from the war n he looked a lot like you do now. You’re family I take it.” When I nodded, wary of the shotgun resting across his forearm, “Abner Wilson. I got the big cabin over yonder.” He cocked his head in the direction I made a note to avoid in the future. “Ned and me was fishing and drinking partners. He supplied the fish and I supplied the drink. It was a good trade. You fish?”

“I’ve been known to.”

“You don’t look like no country boy except for the dings on your face. You ain’t showing any laboring muscle. City boy?” He sent a squirt of tobacco juice into the berry bramble.

“I’m Stan Gardner,” I said, “I was a reporter working on a story about the mob and I got too close. That’s why the knuckle prints.” That got his interest.

“So this is your hideaway? That mean the gov’mint gonna come snooping around?”

“They won’t if nobody tells them I’m here.”

“You sure you ain’t a revenuer?”

“Do I look like one?”

“No, can’t say as you do.” Old Wilson glared with a squint eye. “You look like trouble. Stay offn my property.” He shifted the shotgun to the ready. “And stay away from my daughter.”

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I found his daughter after the moonshiner had slouched away through the thicket separating the properties. She was propped up quite comfortably on granny’s bed reading movie magazines.

“Where’d you find those?” I asked flipping through the dusty stack at her side. There were copies of Screen Star, Film Fun, and Star Brite along with some more risqué covers and content from Gay Parisienne, Spicy, and Smart Set.

She looked up from her magazine, smiling mischievously. “Under the bed. Ned used to get them for me. Well, not all of them.” She flicked the cover of a Spicy with a particularly racy cover. “He would read me stories of Hollywood and all the movie stars. And after a while I caught on how to read and could read them by myself and he said he was real proud of me. Even the teacher over at the school was surprised I could figure out how to read and knew so much about Hollywood which she said was the den of devils but I didn’t believe her because if these are pictures of devils I want one and I want to be one.” She held up a full page spread of Hollywood dollies.

“Wait a minute. You and Ned were. . . ?”

“Intimate? Not once. He wouldn’t allow it. I read all about it in one of his magazines, all the different kinds of kisses, like the soul kiss and the vacuum kiss, the eyelash kiss, the nip, the taxi kiss, and there’s this book called the camera suiter with pictures of how to hold someone when you’re in love with them and. . . .”

“Ok, ok, I think I heard enough. So Ned never tried anything, you know, with his. . . ?”

“Once when I was swimming naked like I do on a full moon night because I read about a movie star who did that, he saw me. And when he stood up to walk away, I saw that he had a stiffy. I thought it was funny because I thought only the boys at school got them. And they’re always after me to touch them, but I won’t ever. Ned told me not to touch their toads, he called them that, cause I’d get warts on my hands and I want my hands to be perfect and white as a Hollywood starlet.”

The sirens were sounding in my head and I don’t mean the ones sitting on rocks calling out to sailors that my old man told me about. These were police sirens, tornado warning sirens, air raid sirens, draw bridge sirens, man overboard ship sirens all telling me one thing. I was looking at trouble. That was the last thing I needed. And the way she was looking at me spelled my doom.

“You’re going to get me killed. You heard your old man. He’d shoot me if he knew you were here.”

She pouted and gave me a sorrowful look. “But Ned. . . .”

“I’m not Ned and you know it!” It came out harsh and she drew back alarmed. I’d scared her. And I realized then that she could be a better ally than an adversary. “Listen, Marie, maybe you can help me.” That brightened her up. “There are some real bad men who would like nothing better than to get their hands on me. I need someone who knows their way around Little Lake, someone who knows hiding places in case they come looking for me, someone to keep their eyes and ears open so someone don’t come sneaking up on me.”

Her eyes opened almost as wide as her pert little mouth and she nodded her head vigorously. “Oh, yes, yes, I can do that, Ned, er, I mean. . . ?”

“You can call me Stan for now. When I get to know you better, I’ll tell you my real name.” I held out my hand because I could tell she wanted to throw her arms around me to seal our compact. “Shake?”

I could have passed a hand over my brow to signify that I dodged a close one. Now she was all smiles as she paused at the door to the cabin. “You can count on me, Stan. And don’t worry about pa, by the time the sun goes down he’s usually drunker than a skunk on sour mash. And that shotgun ain’t loaded. It’s mostly for show when summer folk takes a wrong turn and wander onto his property..”

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He had a smile like a mouthful of soda crackers. They turned to crumbs and he had to swallow them dry when he saw me. I saw him first, coming up behind him snooping around the cabin.

Earlier that day I’d set out with my list of items I’d need if I wanted to eat more than fish and drink moonshine, not that I objected to either of them. I fired up the Scout and rode down to the farm stand and picked up a sack of potatoes and a sack of onions, the foundation of any hearty meal. The farmer wanted two bits for a half dozen eggs. I might have paid that if he made me an omelet and served it to me on a silver platter. He was a thin rail topped by a bushy beard under a floppy felt hat. Under the overalls the sleeves of his long undershirt didn’t reach his wrists and he was missing two fingers on his left hand, pinky and ring. He’d given me the hard eye when I rode up. Maybe it was the sunglasses. I’d taken to wearing them as my eyes were sensitive to the bright country sunshine and the dark lenses helped ease the watery squint. I probably looked like a mobster or a Hollywood movie star to him. His scarecrow of a wife could only gape a toothless stare. The early corn was cheap and I picked up half a dozen ears for a nickel.

I had to go into Big Lake and the mercantile store to pick up canned goods including a couple bricks of spam and a two pound can of Hillsborough coffee. I ducked into the pharmacy and soda shop next door with a handful of nickels and found the bank of phonebooths at the back. I pulled the door shut, deposited a nickel and gave the operator the number to the shared phone by Alice’s studio. The operator instructed me to deposit two more nickels because it was a long distance call.

The phone rang about five times before a gruff voice answered. “Ya!”

“Hey Linkov!” I shouted into the handset, “Get Alice on the horn! It’s me, Lackland Ask!”

I heard him grumble something and then a loud knock and him shouting, “Alice! You have telephone!”

The operator had me deposit another slug before Alice answered. She was happy and happy to hear from me. I didn’t want to waste another dime and got straight to the point. Had she found anyone interested in buying Ted’s art piece?

But she was bubbling with her own news. First of all she was moving up to the loft that her friend Lee had occupied, and where Rebecca and I had spent the night, and who was going to move in with her boyfriend in a larger loft on Ninth Street. And the attack on her had come with a silver lining. An art dealer had read the story  about her being a victim of a violent crime in the paper. Now he was working with an uptown art gallery to get her a show of her own. He’d even sold a few of her watercolors to some rich swells so all of a sudden she had money and prospects for more.

Right about then the operator said I needed to deposit another nickel if I wanted to continue the call. “What about the art piece!” I shouted casting a glance through the glass of the booth door to see if anyone had heard me.

Alice said knew a retired doctor from New Jersey who might be interested and that she was in touch with him to make arrangements. I had just enough time give her the address in Ridley, Stan Gardner, care of Ruth Walker, before my supply of nickels ran out.

Herr Moustache’s army was advancing on Paris, Mister Loony was raising a fuss in North Africa, and Union Jack was in tatters. I didn’t even bother to read what Uncle Joe was up to because it all added up to war, and the battle field is no place for a coward like me.

I was about to clamber back on the old Indian when I caught a whiff of what was being wafted out of the exhaust fan at the Sleepy Waters Café across the street. It made my stomach rumble and I thought, what the heck, I’d just splurged six bits on a long distance call, I might as well treat myself to something that wasn’t fish or moldy preserves.

The sign on the window said Breakfast All Day Every Day. I caught a look at myself in the glass door going in. I was past needing a shave, hair mussed from the ride, and dark glasses I probably looked like a fugitive in some B movie.

But the waitress greeted me friendly enough and showed me to a booth and handed me a menu. “Are you with the movie people staying over at the Big Lake Lodge?” She took my hesitance as confirmation. She beamed a big smile, “Don’t worry I won’t tell anyone. One of the actresses was in here the other day and said their being here was all hush-hush.”

She set a cup of steaming java in front of me while I examined the menu. I had a choice of stewed prunes, apple sauce, or figs with toast and coffee for two bits which seemed a mite high for such a light repast. Or I could get one egg and two strips of bacon or a slice of ham, toast and coffee included, for the same price. Two eggs any style with a compliment of toast and coffee, the same. If I really wanted to splurge I could get a full portion of ham and eggs or bacon, potatoes, fried any style, marmalade on my toast, and coffee for just shy of four bits. I let my eyes wander down to the bottom of the menu and knew right away that the next item of half a dozen eggs, ham steak, potatoes, half a loaf of bread, toasted, and all the coffee I could drink bumping two whole dollars was beyond my budget.

When the waitress came by again I ordered the number 4. She refilled my cup and handed me a copy of the daily blat. “Coming right up,” she said, “You can read the funny papers while you’re waiting.”

To get to the latest in the lives of Maggie and Jiggs, Dagwood and Blondie, and Popeye and Olive Oyl, I had to cross a minefield of depressing headlines. Herr Moustache’s army was advancing on Paris, Mister Loony was raising a fuss in North Africa, and Union Jack was in tatters. I didn’t even bother to read what Uncle Joe was up to because it all added up to war, and the battle field is no place for a coward like me. To top it off, the local Army Corps had to recruit a hundred thousand men by the end of August otherwise the government was going to institute the draft. My appetite was spoiled even before I got to Joe Palooka and Kobby Walsh.

Beside the prospect of being drafted, the death of Becky, the cops and the mob being after me, not to mention the Thieves of Bombay, a trigger happy moonshining neighbor and his star struck oversexed teenage daughter were occupying my mind on my return to Little Lake so I didn’t think too much of the battered ‘31 Ford ragtop parked off to the side where Little Road goes from two ruts to one rut. And when I pushed the bike down the grade toward the cabin, I spotted him, a pear-shaped man with a peaked cap sporting some official insignia, a loose fitting green shirt with a badge clinging to the front pocket, and a wide belt and holster holding up a pair of oversized herringbone trousers. I was almost up on him when he must have heard me, whirling around and clutching at the pistol in the holster before pointing it at me. If I’d been given a guess, I’d say I had just met Thorny.

Next Time: The Graveyard